ONGC's KG gas field to touch peak in July

State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp expects to scale peak output of about 5 million standard cubic meters per day from its Vashishta gas field in KG basin by July this year.
Vashishta and S1 gas fields, located in the Krishna- Godavari (KG) Offshore Basin off the east coast of India, began operations in September last year.
"We are producing 1.1 million standard cubic meters per day from the fields currently and hope to reach about 5 mmscmd by July," a senior company official said.
The fields were developed under a greenfield deepwater development project at an investment of USD 751.65 million.

The Vashishta field is estimated to produce 9.56 billion cubic metres (bcm) over a period of nine years with peak production reaching 3.55 million metric standard cubic metres a day (mmscmd) during the first five years.
The S1 field is expected to deliver 6.22 bcm over a period of eight years with a peak production of 2.2 mmscmd for the first five years.

As part of the Vashishta and S1 field development, ONGC is drilling four wells and shipping the gas from them through a sub-sea pipeline to an onshore terminal at Odalarevu in Andhra Pradesh, he said.
The Vashishta field lies in water depths varying between 500 meters and 700 meters and about between 31-35 km from the Amalapuram coast. The S1 field is located in water depths of between 250 meters and 600 meters, and approximately between 26k-29 km from the Amalapuram coast.

While the Vashishta field is a free gas field with estimated reserves of 12.92 bcm, the S1 field lies to the east of G-1 field and is a free gas field with estimated reserves of 10.37 bcm.
The official said Vashishta is the first field in the country to get the premium price of gas.
In March last year, the government had allowed higher price for new gas production from difficulties areas like deep sea, ultra deepwater and high pressure, high temperature areas.
When ONGC started production the premium price was USD 6.61 per million British thermal unit as against a cap price of USD 3.06 per mmBut for regular fields.

"We got USD 6.61 per mmBtu for about a month," he said.
The premium price for period between October 2016 and March 2017 was cut to USD 5.3 per mmBtu based on benchmark rates in gas surplus economies. The rate for regular gas price also declined to USD 2.50 per mmBtu.
The official said the gas was sold to state gas utility GAIL.
"We have pricing and marketing freedom and we will auction the incremental production. Whosoever pays us the best price, subject to the government prescribed ceiling, will get the gas," he added.